Friday, February 10, 2012

Interesting Article On Short Terms Missions Trips....

I was giving a tour of the hospital to some new doctors yesterday and they asked me how long I'd been on board. Four years in February, I answered, and then stopped short. Somehow, it's hard to believe that I have been a bona-fide, full-time, long-term missionary for almost four years. I know it's nothing to the warriors of the faith who spend entire lifetimes in their adopted countries, but it's quite a significant chunk of my life thus far.

As the calendar marches on and we prepare for yet another Field Service, I've been thinking a lot about short-term mission teams and how much we need them. Here on Mercy Ships, the years follow a predictable cycle. (As predictable as anything in West Africa can really be.) We sail to a new port in January, untie everything that's been secured for the sail and scrub down the hospital before setting everything up so that we can function. We train the crop of new nurses, hold screening and admit the first patients for surgery. For the next ten months, we operate and care for the patients on the wards and in the outpatient clinic and eventually it's time to close up shop and move on. We double-bleach every surface, pack everything away in carts and on pallets and we tie everything back down to the bolts in the floor. Somewhere in December we sail away to a first world port so the crew can have a break and maintenance can be done on the ship. Christmas, New Years, and it's January again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

It can get old.

Not the surgeries and the patients and the lives changing in front of my eyes. That will never be commonplace. But all the in-between. The cleaning and packing and unpacking and setting up. It's an endless set of jobs that we have to do every single year, and I'll be completely honest when I say that I'm not a fan.

This is where the Mercy Teams come in. They don't live this cycle year in and year out,so they don't remember how much their knees hurt from scrubbing the floors just a few months ago or how tired they were after securing yet another strap. They don't remember because they weren't here.

They're a breath of fresh air for those of us who are used to doing all this on our own. We have a team here from Texas (and one random guy from Rhode Island, but we won't hold that against him), and the amount of work they're gotten done in the last week is incredible. They emptied a room that was packed literally floor to ceiling, wall to wall, in a single day. They've set up beds and put together tents on the dock and made medication packs for pharmacy and I just saw them getting roped into helping unload a container with the sales team.

I've heard a lot from people who say that short-term trips aren't really beneficial, that the money should just be given to the organization rather than paying for plane tickets when the people on the team aren't really going to have that much of an impact in two weeks.

And you know what? It wouldn't matter if these guys and girls never even talk to a single Togolese person while they're here. They've blessed and encouraged and strengthened those of us who will be here for the long haul. We'll go into this Field Service energized by their energy, more ready than ever to pour out our lives for the people here in West Africa.